We now have some details on how the 50-hour requirement/rule will be rolled out.  Here’s the New York Law Journal piece.  A couple of important points:

• “The…requirement will take effect immediately for first- and second-year law students, who will have up to 34 months to fulfill the mandate. Current third-years are exempt….  Starting Jan. 1, 2015, every applicant to the bar will be required to fulfill the requirement.
• “Participation in law school clinics for which students receive credit would count [toward satisfying the rule].”

Also, we’ve hosted on PSJD some handouts from the press conference at which the details were announced:

1. an FAQ sheet;
2. a press release;
3. a report from the committee tasked with crafting the rule.

Stanford Law School’s Religious Liberty Clinic is currently accepting applications for a staff attorney position. The clinic offers students the ability to represent clients in disputes relating to religious beliefs, practices, and customs.

From the PSJD job listing:

The RLC is the newest of the eleven clinics comprising the Mills Legal Clinic, and is the only one of its kind in the country. The RLC was launched in August 2012, and will be open to students in January 2013. The Stanford clinical program is unique in that students participate in a clinic on a full-time basis; the clinic is the only course a student takes during the term of enrollment. The Mills Legal Clinic occupies an entire floor in an award-winning central campus building opened earlier this year.

The RLC will focus on developing professional skills in a dynamic way. Specifically, students will be introduced to the “real practice of law” through their representation of a diverse group of clients in disputes arising from a wide range of religious beliefs, practices, and settings. Projects might involve a prisoner facing obstacles to religious observance, a small church, synagogue, or mosque with zoning challenges, or a faith-based group seeking access to public facilities. Students will learn and apply the laws affecting religious liberty, and will be expected to counsel individual or small institutional clients and litigate on their behalf with excellence, professionalism, and maturity.

As a litigation-focused clinic, the RLC will involve administrative, trial, and appellate work. Most administrative and trial work will take place in California, while appellate work will be done nationally. Because the RLC is a new and unique project, near-term clinic activities will also include marketing, outreach, and development efforts.

For full information on this job posting, including qualifications and the deadline, visit PSJD.org (log-in required).

Interested in employment or labor law, or working for the federal government in general? The Department of Labor is currently accepting applications for a number of vacancies. Below is a non-exhaustive list  of available job opportunities. Generally, recent law graduates qualify for positions at the GS-9 pay grade. In order to qualify for a position at the GS-12 grade, applicants must possess at least two years of post-graduate legal experience. Some of the positions have deadlines today, so apply as soon as possible!

For more information on these positions, click the links next to the description, or visit www.usajobs.gov/. For more information on applying for jobs with the federal government, check out PSJD’s 2012-2013 Federal Legal Employment Opportunities Guide.

Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OPCCF), Supervisory Equal Opportunity Specialist (Atlanta, GA)

Apply by Wednesday, September 19, 2012 

Series and Grade: GS-0360-14

More information available at https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/326244700

Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA), Employee Benefits Law Specialist (Washington, DC Area)

Apply by Thursday, September 20, 2012 

Series and Grade: GS-0958-13

More information available at https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/325348400

Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA), Investigator (Pension) (Chicago, IL)

Apply by Monday, September 24, 2012 

Series and Grade: GS-1801-14

More information available at https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/324844600

Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Safety and Occupational Health Specialist (English/Spanish) (San Antonio, TX)

Apply by Wednesday, September 26, 2012 

Series and Grade: GS-0018-09

More information available at https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/326141000

Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Safety and Occupational Health Specialist (English/Spanish) (Austin, TX)

Apply by Thursday, September 27, 2012 

Series and Grade: GS-0018-09

More information available at https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/326255800

by Ashley Matthews

Tired of using hornbooks and hand-me-down outlines to study criminal law?

Nathaniel Burney offers an entertaining and non-traditional alternative. Using his own collection of anecdotal drawings, Burney started a web series of legal cartoons meant to explore concepts dealing with criminal law – then appropriately titled “The Criminal Lawyer’s Guide to Criminal Law”. Now, all 17 installments of his drawings are available  in “The Illustrated Guide to Criminal Law,” a beautifully drawn 260-page book that addresses everything from the legal definition of a crime to sentence enhancements for terrorism.

For your personal enjoyment, here’s a small taste of the Introduction:

Cheers to legal cartoons! The book can be purchased from Jones McClure Publishing.

The Solicitor General/Appeals section of the Ohio Attorney General’s office is looking for new lawyers, recent graduates, or attorneys with limited experience to apply for the 2013 -2014 Simon Karas Fellowship! The Fellow works with the Ohio Attorney General’s Solicitor General, Deputy Solicitors, and other top lawyers in their office on Ohio’s major appellate cases, which often involve constitutional questions or hotly debated public policy concerns. Many of the cases are headed to the U.S. Supreme Court or are already there.

The office’s recent cases provide examples of the kind of work the Karas Fellow will accomplish. From the PSJD job listing:

• Ohio has a busy practice in the U.S. Supreme Court. Our U.S. Supreme Court practice covers a wide variety of cases. In Bobby v. Dixon, for example, we successfully defended the constitutionality of a criminal interrogation under Miranda. In Levin v. Commerce Energy, the Court agreed with us that, under principles of comity and federalism, challenges to state tax laws must be filed in the state courts. We have also filed amicus briefs in a number of highprofile cases: Williams v. Illinois (admissibility of expert testimony about the results of DNA testing in criminal trials); Merck v. Reynolds (fraud claims under federal securities laws); and Doe v. Reed (First Amendment challenge to state law requiring public disclosure of ballot petitions).

• In recent years, the Fellows have worked on other U.S. Supreme Court cases involving double jeopardy, school vouchers, free exercise of religion, federalism and state immunity, interstate commerce, and more.

• The Karas Fellow also assists with cases in the Ohio Supreme Court, where we appear often, both as a party and as an amicus. To name only a few, our recent cases have involved the standard for imposing civil penalties under Ohio’s environmental enforcement laws, the constitutionality of Ohio’s Smoke Free Work Place Act, the eligibility requirements for seeking recovery for wrongful imprisonment, the constitutionality of Ohio’s bifurcation statute in civil trials involving punitive damages, the liability of mortgage servicers for fraudulent acts connected with the nationwide mortgage crisis, and the admissibility of physician apologies in medical malpractice cases. We are also defending the State against multi-million dollar lawsuits that allege state constitutional challenges to certain state taxes.

• We also brief and argue many cases in the Sixth Circuit, and the Karas Fellow assists with those appeals as well. This past year, our Karas Fellow presented oral argument in the Sixth Circuit in a case concerning the constitutionality of a juvenile criminal sentence.

The deadline to apply is October 19, 2012. Check out the full listing, including qualifications and salary, on PSJD.org (log-in required).

by Ashley Matthews

Does law school have you feeling down?

If so, you’re not alone. According to a recent National Law Journal special report  on stressed out students, roughly 40% of law students show signs of depression by their 3L year – surpassing the rate of depression among medical students. Although law school has always had a demanding reputation, the financial pressure to get a job and repay loans in a tough economy has student anxiety at an all-time high.

This upsurge in stress has led to an increase in “wellness” programs at law schools around the country. Whether through on-campus yoga sessions or meditative seminars, these programs offer holistic guidance on coping with stress as a law student.

In addition to information about the wellness trend on law school campuses, the National Law Journal features an article on managing law school workloads and a law school survival guide with advice from “recovering law students”.

There’s help outside the confines of your law school campus as well. The Jed Foundation partnered up with the Dave Nee Foundation – which was created after the 2005 suicide of a Fordham University School of Law student – to launch LawLifeline, a website featuring helpful articles on mental health, and how to combat disorders like depression and anxiety.

Click here to read the full National Law Journal special report!

Catholic Charities Legal Services is looking for a staff attorney to join its office in Miami! From the PSJD job posting:

The successful candidate will be a dynamic and experienced professional, with a demonstrated commitment to the poor, the disadvantaged, and the mentally ill, within the immigrant and refugee communities; a high regard for human rights and the dignity of all persons regardless of national origin; and dedication to a more just immigration system and a humane detention policy. Additionally, he or she will enjoy the challenge of a fast-paced, multi-cultural work environment.

The staff attorney will: provide legal consultation on a variety of legal issues; represent individuals in immigration court proceedings; train and supervise pro bono lawyers; maintain a select caseload of complex immigration; perform legal research; and much more. Language proficiency in Spanish or Creole/French is preferred.

View the full listing at PSJD.org (log-in required)!

by Ashley Matthews

With budget cuts and staff reductions to legal aid organizations widening the barrier to access legal information, many states are coming up with innovative ways to reach their most vulnerable populations.

Most counties in Illinois, for instance, are launching online legal self-help centers for low-income residents. From the State-Journal Register in Springfield, Illinois:

A free online legal self-help center will be accessible to anyone with a computer connected to the Internet. Public access computers also are available at the Carlinville Public Library.

The center will provide legal information in civil matters for people who can’t hire a lawyer and can’t find either a pro bono attorney or a legal aid lawyer to help them. It also contains non-court-related information on topics like Social Security, Medicare, unemployment compensation and others.

Joseph Dailing, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Equal Justice, which helped plan the project, said users go first to a common website for all 91 such centers statewide. From there, they can access an individual county home page. That page contains information on six topics selected locally, he said.

The Macoupin legal self-help center is one of 91 throughout Illinois, each in a separate county.

“In the larger counties, such as Sangamon, the centers are in the circuit court clerk’s offices in the courthouses,” Dailing said. “They are in libraries in the smaller counties.”

Although anyone with computer access can use the center, Dailing said topics featured on the site “are the kinds of legal problems typically encountered by lower-income individuals.”

The online centers were funded by the Illinois Equal Justice Foundation, and the sites are maintained by Illinois Legal Aid Online. While the site will offer general legal information about common legal subjects like divorce and foreclosure, it will not provide any legal advice.

We weren’t much aware of Constitution Day’s existence either.  Turns out it’s a relatively new federal day of observance, and is wrapped up with a previous federal holiday which was known as Citizenship Day.  As it also turns out, today is the 225th anniversary of the Constitution’s signing (Sept. 17, 1787).  So do a little dance, make a little love, and get down tonight in celebration of such things as the separation of powers and the ever-exciting Arisings Clause.

Calling all aspiring Skadden Fellows.  A reminder that the proposal/application deadline is October 1, 2012.   Use PSJD’s fellowship application tools to polish up your proposal now.  Good luck!